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NAME
perlpragma - how to write a user pragma
DESCRIPTION
A pragma is a module which influences some aspect of the compile time or run time behaviour of Perl, such as
strict
orwarnings
. With Perl 5.10 you are no longer limited to the built in pragmata; you can now create user pragmata that modify the behaviour of user functions within a lexical scope.A basic example
For example, say you need to create a class implementing overloaded mathematical operators, and would like to provide your own pragma that functions much like
use integer;
You'd like this codeuse MyMaths; my $l = MyMaths->new(1.2); my $r = MyMaths->new(3.4); print "A: ", $l + $r, "\n"; use myint; print "B: ", $l + $r, "\n"; { no myint; print "C: ", $l + $r, "\n"; } print "D: ", $l + $r, "\n"; no myint; print "E: ", $l + $r, "\n";
to give the output
A: 4.6 B: 4 C: 4.6 D: 4 E: 4.6
i.e., where
use myint;
is in effect, addition operations are forced to integer, whereas by default they are not, with the default behaviour being restored viano myint;
The minimal implementation of the package
MyMaths
would be something like this:package MyMaths; use v5.36; use myint(); use overload '+' => sub { my ($l, $r) = @_; # Pass 1 to check up one call level from here if (myint::in_effect(1)) { int($$l) + int($$r); } else { $$l + $$r; } }; sub new { my ($class, $value) = @_; bless \$value, $class; } 1;
Note how we load the user pragma
myint
with an empty list()
to prevent itsimport
being called.The interaction with the Perl compilation happens inside package
myint
:package myint; use v5.36; sub import { $^H{"myint/in_effect"} = 1; } sub unimport { $^H{"myint/in_effect"} = 0; } sub in_effect { my $level = shift // 0; my $hinthash = (caller($level))[10]; return $hinthash->{"myint/in_effect"}; } 1;
As pragmata are implemented as modules, like any other module,
use myint;
becomesBEGIN { require myint; myint->import(); }
and
no myint;
isBEGIN { require myint; myint->unimport(); }
Hence the
import
andunimport
routines are called at compile time for the user's code.User pragmata store their state by writing to the magical hash
%^H
, hence these two routines manipulate it. The state information in%^H
is stored in the optree, and can be retrieved read-only at runtime withcaller()
, at index 10 of the list of returned results. In the example pragma, retrieval is encapsulated into the routinein_effect()
, which takes as parameter the number of call frames to go up to find the value of the pragma in the user's script. This usescaller()
to determine the value of$^H{"myint/in_effect"}
when each line of the user's script was called, and therefore provide the correct semantics in the subroutine implementing the overloaded addition.Key naming
There is only a single
%^H
, but arbitrarily many modules that want to use its scoping semantics. To avoid stepping on each other's toes, they need to be sure to use different keys in the hash. It is therefore conventional for a module to use only keys that begin with the module's name (the name of its main package) and a "/" character. After this module-identifying prefix, the rest of the key is entirely up to the module: it may include any characters whatsoever. For example, a moduleFoo::Bar
should use keys such asFoo::Bar/baz
andFoo::Bar/$%/_!
. Modules following this convention all play nicely with each other.The Perl core uses a handful of keys in
%^H
which do not follow this convention, because they predate it. Keys that follow the convention won't conflict with the core's historical keys.Implementation details
The optree is shared between threads. This means there is a possibility that the optree will outlive the particular thread (and therefore the interpreter instance) that created it, so true Perl scalars cannot be stored in the optree. Instead a compact form is used, which can only store values that are integers (signed and unsigned), strings or
undef
- references and floating point values are stringified. If you need to store multiple values or complex structures, you should serialise them, for example withpack
. The deletion of a hash key from%^H
is recorded, and as ever can be distinguished from the existence of a key with valueundef
withexists
.Don't attempt to store references to data structures as integers which are retrieved via
caller
and converted back, as this will not be threadsafe. Accesses would be to the structure without locking (which is not safe for Perl's scalars), and either the structure has to leak, or it has to be freed when its creating thread terminates, which may be before the optree referencing it is deleted, if other threads outlive it.Module Install Instructions
To install less, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm less
perl -MCPAN -e shell install less
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.